Consumers or shoppers purchase various goods and services at various times. For example, consumers purchase goods such as groceries and other consumables including food items such as cereal, meat, milk and baby formula, toiletries such as toilet paper and paper towels and bathroom supplies such as toothpaste, floss, mouthwash, etc. These items may be consumed and purchased weekly, every other week, once a month, and at other times depending on the quantity of items purchased each time and how quickly they are consumed. The rate at which such goods and services are consumed and how often they must be purchased again may be affected by various factors such as the number of people in a consumer's family, consumer preferences and circumstances. In addition, these factors may change over time as people join a family, preferences change and new products become available.
Given the nature of consumable goods and services, they are used or needed at different rates and at different times. For example, consumers may or may not know how much of a particular good remains and whether it is necessary to purchase the good again. Consequently, when consumers shop at one or more stores, they may not know that they need to purchase a particular good or may forget about the good, thereby resulting in the consumer forgoing such goods until the next shopping trip or requiring the consumer to go out again to one or more stores to purchase forgotten goods. These shortcomings resulting from reliance on consumer memory result in inconvenience and loss of valuable time and money due to consumers driving and walking around stores purchasing goods that could have been purchased during an earlier shopping trip.